


Begin Again

by Skyepilot



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Apocalyptic Themes, Camping, Complicated Relationships, Coulson being rescued by his superhero girl, Coulson being sassy, Desert, Eating, F/M, First Kiss, First Time, Flirting, Friends to Lovers, Hive is a pretentious asshole, Implied Sexual Content, Inhumans (Marvel), Kissing, Male-Female Friendship, Marshmallows, Sex on a Car, Skye | Daisy Johnson's Superpowers, Sleeping Under The Stars, Sunglasses, The Playground, Unresolved Sexual Tension, eating gas station food, fighting the future together, wearing gas station clothes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-09
Updated: 2016-04-09
Packaged: 2018-06-01 06:36:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,132
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6504706
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skyepilot/pseuds/Skyepilot
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Reversal of Nothing Personal with Daisy rescuing Coulson in Lola.  Speculative plot stuff.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Begin Again

There’s not much time and they don’t have enough boots on the ground.  The manpower _or_ technical resources to stop exactly what this thing calling itself Hive has set into motion.

They just need to get out of the Playground and regroup.

Where he can’t control her team, or do what he did to their agents.

It wants Phil, for some reason.  She can only guess around at it, but if she thinks about that too long, it becomes somehow even more disturbing.

“Take off in the Quinjet,” she says to May, as they both hear the banging sound at something from inside the base trying to get into the hanger through the reinforced doors. “Get the others to safety and we’ll rendezvous. I’m going back for the Director.”

May narrows her eyes at her, for making it sound more like an order than statement.

Then, her voice goes all soft, like her eyes.

“Daisy-“

She doesn’t hesitate. She grabs May’s hand and squeezes it.

“I’m not leaving here without him.  You’re in charge.”

May nods to her and then turns, coolly orders the people around her to finish the evac.

“Every time I get used to a place, we blow it up,” she mutters, as she walks up the ramp.

Daisy knows how she feels.

She sighs and starts to run back towards the entrance doors, getting ready to fight people like her, on the other side, and then feels a tingling in the back of her neck and turns.

There’s a tarp covering her in the corner, in a set-aside part of the hangar.

She turns her head and concentrates, running through the tactical possibilities in her head, or whether she’s being irrational to want this.

Then nods, having made a choice, and makes a run for Lola.

 

#

“Coulson,” the creature says to him quietly. “I like your fear.”

He looks down at the prosthetic hand he left on the alien planet, sitting on his desk like some kind of bizarre trophy.

“You’re not Grant Ward,” Coulson answers, through gritted teeth.

“Trying _so_ hard to be a good man.  The kind of man who fears the abyss looking back.”

His eyes move to Malick for a moment, standing in the corner wearing the exoskeleton.

“Nietzsche, of course,” he smirks. “The abyss? It looks a lot like an extra from a B-horror movie.”

He feels a moment of gratification as Hive purses his lips.

“But I don’t imagine you’ve seen very many of those?”

Then, Hive smiles at him, with Grant Ward’s face.  Calm, not like the other man’s predator-grin that used to haunt him.

“No, for thousands of years, I had nothing. Just myself.”

“You had some very interesting conversations, then,” Coulson keeps on.

“Why are we wasting time with him?!” Malick suddenly growls, as Hive’s face flickers with a brief moment of irritation.

“Because, Coulson is different.  Aren’t you?”  Hive asks, raising his hand between them.

Coulson groans sharply and it feels like something is trying to pull his body apart, one molecule at a time.

He’d rather pass out than let it hear him scream.

Then it stops, and he realizes he’s already on the floor, on his knees, clutching his chest.

“You have their blood,” Hive says, finally excited. “Like us.”

“You can’t take him,” Malick says, working it out. “Because of the alien serum.”

“No,” Hive admits, turning towards Malick, his hands clasped behind his back. “Possibly a _very_ suitable host”

Coulson stares at the floor, wages a war inside with the fear gripping him.

“That would hurt worse than what I did just now, wouldn’t it?” Hive calls down to him.  “Coulson?”

He says his name like he’s demanding an answer.

“I think you’re about to hurt a lot worse,” he breathes, looking out the windows.

They turn at the sound of the high-pitched whine, as the windows are shattered by a spray of bullets.

It’s Daisy, with Lola in hover mode, circling back around for another pass.

Hive begins to move forwards, and Coulson stands up, reaches for him with his hand and hits him hard enough with his prosthetic that he’s sure he’s loosened a few teeth.

“Phil! Get in!” she yells, her arm stretched out towards him across the driver’s seat, closer to the window than before.

Hive slides his jaw back and forth, then sees Malick go vibrating past, shattering the contents of the shelves behind the desk.

“She will join me,” Hive says, eyes darting up to Daisy, as Coulson picks up a chair, and swings it against him, making him only stumble a bit.

“Daisy!”

He runs for the window, and jumps, scrambling up into the seat as her powers unleash above him.

“Bring it down,” he tells her, glaring back at Hive.

“Bring it all down.”

 

#

“May says we’re all accounted for.  We lost some good people. It’s not fair.”

She hangs up the SAT phone and sits down in the plastic folding chair, looks up at the clear night sky.

“She asked me if I killed him right this time.  I tried my best.”

Coulson chuckles a little at that, pokes the stick back into the fire.

“I know it matters to you, Daisy.  Those people gave their lives to protect us, the team.  You would’ve done the same.”

“Yeah,” she says, kicking her boots off and popping open the beer bottle.

“That was quite a rescue,” he smiles, loosening his tie, still replaying it in his head.

He was supposed to meet with the President today.  _That_ didn’t happen.

“What made you think of Lola?” he wonders, curious.

She shrugs a little, and the cheap cotton dress she’s wearing slides off one of her shoulders, as she pulls the strap back up.

“She called out to me. In the hangar.”

He grins, and sits down on the ground next to her, crosses his legs in the hard dirt. “I guess weirder things have happened.”

She watches him finish with the tie, then take off his shoes, his socks, slide his bare feet out in front of him nearer to the fire.

“Do you think we’re safe?” she asks.  “Out here.”

“It’s in the middle of nowhere,” he sighs, looking up at the night sky. “I can’t imagine who would find us.”

“I guess my vibrations did something to Lola’s hover system,” Daisy says, apologetically, then takes a swig of the beer.

“Nothing we can’t fix,” he answers, reaching forward towards the stick in the fire. “Rebuild.”

Their eyes meet and she knows he’s not talking about Lola.  He’s talking about her destroying the base, having to start over again.

He pulls the marshmallow out of the heat on its stick and blows on the charred remains.

She smiles as she watches him try to eat it, too hot, and end up with a gooey mess on his fingers.

“Napkins,” he says, with his mouth full, licking at his fingers. “That’s what we forgot.”

He tips the stick towards her and watches as she delicately pulls the other one off, almost dropping it, and tilts her head to get it all into her mouth before it does.

“What?” she asks him, smiling, moving her tongue along her mouth when he won’t stop staring. For whatever is on her face.

He smiles back, and stands up dusting his pants off, goes back to the cluster of quickie mart bags sitting on the ground.

“Hot dog?” he asks her, holding up the pack of sausages.

 

#

“You’ve obviously done this before.”

Shifting on the inflated pool raft, he pulls the beach towel over his shoulders, then glares down at his exposed toes in the moonlight.

“You have to curl up,” she mentions, tucking her knees even closer to her.

“Your body isn’t even on the floaty,” he frowns, looking next to him at her feet touching the dirt.

“I don’t know what to tell you, Phil.”

“I can’t sleep.” He rubs his hand over his face, and sees all the stars above him.  That planet is up there.  The one he couldn’t keep Hive on.

“We’ll get him. Promise.”

“He said that I could be a good host.  Because of the Kree stuff in my blood.”

“Ew,” she says, then turns over to look at him, propping her head up.

She sees his frown as he meets her eyes and she reaches out to pat his shoulder with her free hand.

“I mean, _ewwww_ about him,” she tells him, embarrassed. “Not about you.”

“He’s angry,” he goes on, troubled. “About things Ward was angry about.”

“What do you mean?”

He can tell she’s narrowing her eyes at the way her tone has changed, and turns over so that his elbows are under him, as he leans closer to her.

“You would, right?  If you had to?”

“Don’t talk like this,” she warns him, pushing the towel off and standing up. “I just had to destroy the Playground.”

“I’m sorry,” he says, getting to his feet to follow after her, as she starts to pace in front of Lola.

“It’s not inevitable,” she chides him. “You were supposed to stay behind, because you thought you might kill me, but you couldn’t because-“

He’s guilty, for working her up like this, making her have to share in his fears.  It’s been pressing in on him ever since they flew away in Lola.

“We’ll find another way,” he finishes for her, nods to reassure her.

She seems surprised, like she’s worked something out. “Come here.”

“I…am here,” he replies, giving her a doubting look.

“No.” It sounds frustrated, and she closes her eyes. “Here.”

Her hand twists into his white undershirt, and pulls him hard up against her, her other hand steadying them on Lola’s door like she’s surprised by her own boldness.

He only hesitates for a moment, whispering to her again: we’ll find another way.

Then he leans forward, and kisses her.

 

#

The energy between them, he realizes, it has to do with being alive.

He’s not supposed to be here, but he is.

When she rescued him, called his name, it filled him with hope. 

She’s done it hundreds of times, in so many small ways.

He needs her, he knows, and he’s for her.

That’s what she was trying to say.

It’s what he’s saying to her now as his lips press to her chin, then her throat, as she tilts her head further back.

She moans beneath him, laid out on Lola’s hood as he moves inside her, trying to take his time, to make it really good for her.

This might be all the time they have.

He’s supposed to be here.

And he’s glad to be alive.

With her.

 

#

She’s waiting outside of the gas station, as he finishes paying and picks up the cups of coffee.

Wearing his aviators and leaning against Lola, looking like she’s ready if the apocalypse arrives at any moment.

A tumbleweed actually blows across the parking lot right in front of her, as her hair whips around her and she pulls a piece out of her mouth.

The door chimes open and he makes his way to her, holding the coffee cups and squinting in the blinding desert light.

“You need sunglasses,” she smiles at him, taking one of the coffee cups from him.

“Dammit, I forgot,” he says, clicking his tongue.

“Here.”

Setting down both coffees on Lola’s hood, she takes the glasses off herself, then slides them gently over his eyes.

“Thanks,” he says, holding her around the waist with a hand, letting her decide if she wants to kiss him or not.

She does, and cups his face to draw him to her, giving him more than just a kiss, until he’s backed her against Lola’s door.

“This is how things get started,” she teases, biting at her lower lip and pushing her hips against him playfully. “We’re meeting at the rendezvous point in 15 minutes.”

“I know,” he says, sadly.

“I’ll be quick,” she promises, popping her hand against his rear with a grin as she turns to walk back towards the gas station.

He follows her with his eyes, looking at her long legs in the white dress, wearing her field suit boots, and sips the cup of coffee tentatively.

“Sheesh.”  He chuckles to himself, and takes the cups with him as he walks around to the passenger seat, and waits, while she makes small talk with the clerk inside and then appears again, wearing a pair of dark black sunglasses.

She opens the driver’s door and sits down, turning on the engine.

“Ready?” she asks him.

“Always,” he answers, resting his hand on her knee, flipping on the radio.

“Good.”

She smiles, and pushes her foot all the way down on the gas.


End file.
